


A Month Come Due

by Tassos



Series: Human Stuff [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Friendship, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Slice of Life, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 12:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17828528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: After a month in space, Pidge learns that the Castle of Lions is ill-equipped to handle some of the more mundane and annoying things half of humans have to deal with on a monthly basis. After a misunderstanding makes things awkward, her team sets out to cheer her up.





	A Month Come Due

Pidge checked behind herself twice before approaching Allura on the bridge. Except for the two of them, it was empty. The boys were still half-asleep at breakfast. Or at least Lance and Hunk were. She hadn't seen Keith or Shiro when she'd snuck past the door to the dining room on her way here. It was just as well. She didn't want to talk to anyone about this. Bad enough she'd have to talk to Allura.

"Pidge!" Allura noticed her come in. She turned away from the display showing the map of a solar system in great detail. Pidge wondered where it was and who lived there - but Allura shut it down when she stepped away from the controls. "Can I help you with something?"

Pidge fidgeted on her feet. She really didn't want to be here, but she'd already looked everywhere she could think of, and even the stupid blankets were made of a material that was non-absorbent. Great for drinking in bed. Not so great when -

"Pidge?" Allura sounded worried. Pidge took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts.

"Hi," she said somewhat inanely. Way to go, weirdo, she thought to herself. But Allura had all of her focus on Pidge, and while Pidge wasn't intimidated or anything, Allura wasn't exactly the type of girl she got along with. Or ever wanted to talk to really. With the hair and the crown and the dress and the princessness. Not that there was anything wrong with Allura. Shit. Now she was being mean. And avoiding the subject. "Right. So I was looking around for an absorbent material. Cloth. But I couldn't find anything other than my clothes so I was wondering if there was anything else in the Castle that I could use. Have."

Allura frowned. "Did you spill something in your room? You know the cleaning vacuum will get up liquids as well as solids."

"Oh, I know, but I need an absorbent cloth." Pidge fidgeted again.

"The Castle's cleaning functions may not be what you're used to, but I assure you that they are very efficient."

"It's not a problem with the Castle or my room. I just need an absorbent cloth and you don't even have a towel I can cut up!" Pidge said, exasperated. Sure the air dry for the shower and the bidet in the toilet were nice and all, but they really didn't help her right now.

"I'm afraid I don't know what a towel is. What do you need one for?" Allura asked. The worst part was how sincere she was about it.

Pidge closed her eyes and wished she was anywhere else. "For me."

"The air dryers-"

"No, I know, but that won't work because I'm bleeding -"

"Bleeding! Where!?" Allura shouted in alarm, and then before Pidge could explain she hit the ship-wide intercom and yelled, "Coran, we need you on the command deck immediately. Pidge is hurt and bleeding." She grabbed Pidge's shoulder. "Where are you hurt? Show me."

While Allura tried to take off Pidge's shirt and inspect her for wounds, ignoring her protests that it wasn't a big deal, really, Coran ran in with Shiro and Keith on his heels and less than ten seconds after them Hunk and Lance showed up.

Pidge batted Allura's hands away. "Get off of me!" she shouted, dodging Coran - "What's wrong with Number Five?!" - and running for the elevator that would take her to Green. "Nothing's wrong!" she threw the words bitterly over her shoulder. "Fuck all of you! I'll figure it out myself!" And with that she threw herself through the doors and slammed against the interior wall. She covered her face with her hands and she wasn't going to cry because crying was stupid and she was angry not upset, and she'd been so stupid thinking Allura could help her.

It didn't help much and the urge to cry didn't go away, not even when she swung out on the zipline, which she usually loved. By the time she reached Green and her gentle mental nudge, more a feeling than words, Pidge decided that she could probably wait out the week in her Lion.

* * *

"Oookay." Lance was the one to break the silence, he looked around at everyone else who looked as weirded out as he felt.

"Allura, what happened?" Shiro asked.

"Yeah, is Pidge okay?" asked Hunk, who had his worried face on.

"Should we go after her?" Keith was looking at the door that led to the Green Lion's hangar. He didn't look like he wanted to go after her. Lance didn't blame him. Pidge didn't usually swear much, and certainly not at people.

Allura wrung her hands, looking from one to the next of them. "I think we have to! She said she was bleeding!"

"It's not like Pidge to run off when she's hurt," Shiro said, frowning. "Are you sure she was bleeding?"

"Well, I didn't see it," Allura said. "But she was looking for an absorbent cloth, and she said she hadn't spilled anything but she needed it because she was bleeding, so clearly she cut herself somewhere -"

"Oh." A light bulb went off in Lance's head, and he felt his own eyes get wide as he realized. He felt stupid for not thinking of it earlier, but then he wasn't used to thinking of Pidge as a _girl_ even after she'd told them, and wow, that explained her swearing and running off.

"What?" Hunk nudged him, and Lance blinked and found everyone staring at him expectantly.

"It's her, you know." He was going to have to say it, he realized when everyone kept staring, and wow when it was his sisters throwing it around it was one thing, but when it was about Pidge it was just awkward. "Her period." He really hoped he wasn't blushing right now.

Lance scratched the back of his head and watched as at least Hunk, Shiro, and Keith got it.

"Definitely not following her then." Keith took a step back from the hangar access.

"Oh man," was all Hunk said, but with feeling.

"That's a complication I didn't think of," Shiro said, running his natural hand over his head, which made Lance feel better because if Shiro was weirded out then it wasn't as weird.

"What? What does that mean?" Coran asked.

"So she's not dying?" asked Allura.

And then Shiro, their fearless leader, looked at Lance like he was waiting for him to explain female biology to the aliens. Lance made a face, and Shiro sighed.

"No, she's not," he said. "It's something human women go through about once a month - err, every thirty quintants or so." He took a breath and squared his shoulders, and oh shit he was actually going to explain. "Women bleed out of their vagina. It's perfectly natural and not painful."

"Not painful!?" Lance burst out. He couldn't help it, because if there was one thing he'd learned about periods it was, "There's cramps! And lower back pain! My sister would take so many drugs and sometimes she still skipped school, and my other sister once nearly broke my fingers when I said she was faking to get out of a test."

"I did not need to know that!" Hunk hid behind his hands. Even Shiro looked surprised, and Keith was slinking toward the door.

"Pidge didn't look like she was in pain, did she?" Shiro asked Allura.

"She looked pissed," Keith muttered.

"Well, yeah," Lance scoffed at him.

Allura meanwhile was totally overwhelmed. "That's awful!" she said. "Every thirty quintants? And she can't stop it?" She looked with an expression of horror between Shiro and Lance, and this time Lance did answer because Shiro shrugged.

"Uh, not without medical stuff that we probably don't have?" He was pretty sure that his sisters' birth control helped when they were older, but he'd been at the Garrison by then and frankly, hadn't given it much thought.

"So what does she need, like pads and stuff?" Hunk asked.

"Well, yeah," Lance said. Then the rest of what Allura had said sunk in - the Alteans didn't even have towels. Just the vacuum thingys and the air dryers.

Shiro must have been thinking the same thing, because he sighed again. "All right. Lance, you go with Coran and see if you can find something that will work in the Arusian village."

"Me?! Why me?" Lance threw his hands out as if he could ward off being put in charge of finding something for, well, ugh.

"Because you sound like you know what you're talking about," Shiro said in an entirely too reasonable tone of voice that made Lance squint at him, something else occurring to him.

"Wait, Shiro! Are you one of those guys who was too embarrassed to buy his girlfriend tampons?" The revelation was so big Lance could ignore the fact that he was complaining about the same thing. But this was Shiro!

Who was giving him a flat look that was not at all impressed. "I've never had a girlfriend."

Lance felt his jaw drop, floored. "Wha-?!" he managed, and then another even more world-shattering thought hit him. "Shiro, have you never had se-"

"Because I've only had boyfriends," Shiro spoke quickly over him, giving Lance an even deader-eyed stare paired with a raised eyebrow telling him to drop it.

That was fine, because Lance was so surprised he was pretty sure he'd lost his ability to speak entirely.

"Right, well," Hunk coughed into the awkward silence. He also helpfully closed Lance's jaw. "I'll go see if there's anything in the kitchen I can make for Pidge to make her feel better. How about a food goo sculpture? I mean, all we have is food goo, but it'll taste better in funny shapes, right?" He elbowed Lance. "Stop being weird, man."

"I'm not being weird," Lance mumbled, folding his arms and looking away from Shiro even though he desperately wanted to look at him. He was his hero! How did he not know this about his hero? Who had he dated? Were they cute? Were they good enough for Shiro? These were questions he'd pondered and now he had to swap in the whole other half of the world into his mental musings. Of course, as he thought about it now, after having gotten to know Shiro a little, it was weird - Hunk was totally right. Lance's shoulders slumped. Still it was better than thinking about having to ask the Arusians if they had something for, well, ugh.

"Come on, Number Three," Coran clapped Lance on the shoulder and started steering him out. "Describe for me what we're looking for."

Lance groaned. This was the worst.

* * *

Pidge sat slumped in her pilot's seat feeling gross and terrible and angry. She'd found some bandage-type material in a first aid kit that Green helpfully nudged her toward. It wasn't perfect, but it was something to keep the blood from destroying her clothing, though her underwear was a lost cause unless Altean laundry was as magical as the rest of their stupid cleaning supplies. Stupid aliens and their stupid, high tech answers for everything. Normally, Pidge was all for high-tech solutions. The healing pods were amazing. But normal human menstruation wasn't going to be healed away.

Being a girl sucked! It was so unfair. It had been bad enough at the Galaxy Garrison when she'd disguised herself as a boy, but at least she'd had access to supplies. In the back of Pidge's mind, Green made a mental nudge of sympathy. She was pretty sure the lion didn't really understand what the problem was - though the mental image of fluid leaking everywhere was not bad actually - but she was unhappy that Pidge was unhappy, and Pidge would take what sympathy she could get after the disaster with Allura.

Even thinking about it, Pidge hid her face in her hand. What a compete failure at playing it cool! Allura had had no clue, and Pidge could have killed her when she kept pressing and then called everyone to the command deck after getting the wrong idea. They were all probably thinking she was crazy for the way she'd stormed out of there, and she wouldn't be surprised if Shiro showed up soon, which would be even worse because then Pidge would have to explain and it had been bad enough when it was her mom giving her the run down of what was what. 

Sure enough fifteen minutes later: "Pidge?" Shiro's voice came through Green's communications system. Sitting up slightly when Green helpfully turned on the display, Pidge smiled a little when she saw the particle shield up and Shiro standing by her workstation in his regular clothes with his helmet on. He looked a little ridiculous.

"Come on, Pidge. Talk to me. Are you okay at least?" he asked. He didn't sound like he thought she was dying, so that was something. 

Pidge tapped her finger next to the control that would let her speak back without her helmet comm. Shiro was patient. The silence stretched, and he didn't move, and finally Pidge started feeling bad about staying quiet. She tapped the button. "I'm fine. I'm not dying. Allura got the wrong idea. And no, I don't want to talk about it," she snapped off before he could ask.

To her surprise, Shiro simply said, "Okay. You don't have to. I trust that if you were really in trouble you'd tell us."

Pidge's stupid eyes teared up, and she hated her stupid emotions welling up when they shouldn't, but she was also grateful that he was being cool about it.

"So, uh," Shiro cleared his throat. "We're working off the assumption that it's your period, so I sent Lance and Coran to see if the Arusians had anything that might be what you need. I'll drop off whatever they find when they get back, and you can come out when you're ready."

He gave a little wave from the floor and then headed out. Pidge was tearing up again, and so full of relief that it took her a moment to find the talk control again.

"Thanks, Shiro," she said, hoping he couldn't hear the frog in her throat. Ugh. Periods were the worst, making her feel all over the place. 

He was at the hangar door and paused, half turning. "No problem. If you need anything, let me know. I mean it. And if you want to talk later . . ."

Pidge wouldn't. This was something she one hundred percent did not need to talk about. But she said, "Okay, thanks," anyway.

When she was alone with Green again, some of the loneliness had gone away, and maybe she wouldn't stay in her Lion for the whole week after all.

* * *

When Lance and Coran got back from the Arusian village he'd delivered a basket of alien flour and sugar and eggs to Hunk in the kitchen. After spending a disastrous hour trying to shape food goo into something pretty, he'd about given up on being able to do anything useful. But this? This he could work with.

He shooed Lance out after half an hour, and then he shooed Keith out once the admittedly-weird-looking cookies were in the oven and the aroma had drawn him in.

"Pidge gets first dibs," he told Keith as he pushed him out.

"They're green," Keith was staring at the first batch that Hunk had pulled out.

"I had to substitute in goo for butter."

"Can I try one?"

"No."

Keith went but he was back ten minutes later, drifting in and hanging out by the counter and getting in Hunk's way like he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Can't you go hover somewhere else?" Hunk asked.

"I hate waiting," Keith said. "I'm really bad at it," he added like it was a secret or something.

Hunk rolled his eyes. "I never would have guessed." He continued dropping more dough on the baking sheet for the next batch.

"Do you have sisters?"

"Aunts and cousins," Hunk said, getting what he was asking. "It never really came up though. What about you?"

Keith shook his head and watched Hunk work with an intensity that was kind of unnerving.

"Look, this can't be fun for you. Why don't you go wait in the lounge or something. Find something distracting for us to do besides talk about it when Pidge shows up."

Keith was good with missions and he perked up a little at the suggestion. Hunk didn't care what he came up with as long as it kept him occupied. He got the next batch of cookies out of the oven and tried one. Not terrible. Tasted mostly like sweet food goo but there was no helping that, he supposed.

"Hunk." Keith was back. He tossed his hair out of his face and said, "We need your help."

Out in the lounge, Keith had gotten the projection system running and Lance was trying to get the settings right with the power of cursing. 

"Okay, Lance, back away slowly." Hunk was no Pidge when it came to intuiting the Altean systems, but he could carry his own when it came to connections and displays. And he knew when to call in Coran for help, who showed him the pair of switches he'd mixed up and patted him on the head afterward.

"Not bad there, Hunk. We'll make an Altean able-crewperson out of you yet."

Hunk grinned and threw Lance a glance, feeling pretty pleased that he'd got it eighty percent there. Then he looked around, noticing that it was just them. "Hey, where did Keith go?"

"Probably to sneak some cookies," Lance shrugged.

"Cookies!" Hunk almost forgot! He raced back to the kitchen just in time to pull out the next batch. They were a little crisp around the edges, but not entirely inedible. He picked out the good ones and decided to keep the rest in reserve. A noise at the doorway had him calling out, "Go away, they're not ready yet!" as he looked up, and then, "Pidge! Hi!" 

Pidge was partially in and out of the room, leaning in around the door and looking unsure of her welcome. Her nose and eyes were red and her hair was a little flat, but she smiled a little and generally looked tired but okay.

"I made cookies," Hunk said, feeling suddenly shy but refusing to let it slow him down. "Do you want to try one?" 

"You said they weren't ready?"

"I thought you were Keith." Hunk scooped up one of the cooled cookies from the rack and held it out. Pidge didn't need to be told twice. She nibbled the edge experimentally, making a face that didn't seem good or bad and then ate the rest in two bites.

"S'good," she said with her mouth full, the corner of her mouth quirking up a bit more.

Hunk grinned. "Cool. Lance and Coran brought real flour, well, alien flour and stuff back from the village. I was a bit worried about what I was going to use for the fat but, well, goo. I hope you don't mind the goo flavor. If you do we can see if the Arusians have something else we can use." He knew he was babbling a little bit but Pidge didn't seem to mind. Instead, her eyes had gotten wider and she looked at him over the tops of her glasses.

"You made these for me?" she asked.

"Well, yeah." Hunk offered her another one. "You're feeling kind of crappy, so cookies." He glanced around the kitchen, a yawning loss opening up inside him at the mess of flour and sugar and food goo everywhere. "My mom always made me cookies when I was feeling down," he said, shyly. 

Pidge's expression melted, and before he knew it, she was launching herself at Hunk. He barely had time to catch her before she was hugging him hard, sniffling a little bit when she let go.

"I'm not crying," she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"Okay," he said. He knew about not-crying. He was feeling a little bit like that himself. He coughed to clear his throat. "So hey. If you want to hang out, we set up the screen in the lounge."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I have no idea what we're going to watch but I bet it will be hilariously Altean."

That got a weak laugh out of Pidge, and she smiled up at him. "More training videos."

"High melodrama. I'm bringing the cookies."

"Okay, yeah. I gotta," she waved vaguely toward the door.

"Okay, see you later." Hunk let out a breath once she was gone, warm and happy that she was smiling.

* * *

Pidge felt a little shaky as she hurried from the kitchen back to her room. Her mom hadn't made cookies but hot cocoa for her when her period was bad. She missed her terribly when Hunk had said that about his mom, and she was a terrible daughter for leaving her mom behind without knowing what had happened to her. And fuck, Pidge was going to cry again and she really didn't want to do that in the hallway.

She just wished everyone would stop being nice to her. First Shiro, and the Lance getting her stuff, and now Hunk with his cookies. All Pidge wanted was to be miserable in peace! If she wasn't freezing cold and didn't need a change of clothes she would have stayed in Green all night.

Focused on getting to her room, Pidge wasn't paying attention when she rounded a corner and barreled into Keith. They both bounced back a little bit, but neither of them fell. Pidge was too busy staring at him and the rather large bundle of blankets in his arms to move, however.

"Pidge!" Keith was just as surprised as she was. "You, uh, okay? I didn't see you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. What's that for?" She waved at the blankets.

Keith shifted a little, but he raised his chin over the heap in his arms. "For the lounge. We set up the screen. Coran said he had some old movies. They're probably going to be hilariously bad. I thought - we thought . . . it might be nice."

 _For you_ , hung between them, and Pidge felt that stupid welling in her eyes again because Keith was supposed to be the aloof, surly one, and he had gathered the horrible non-absorbent _blankets_.

"Uh." Keith swallowed hard. "You okay?"

Pidge nodded, keeping the tears under her eyes by sheer force of will. She hated this! It wasn't even a big deal! "I just -" She waved down the hall toward her rooms and Keith nodded, stepping out of her way. Pidge fled.

When she was safely behind her closed door, she swiped hurriedly at her eyes. She took a moment and tried to clear her thoughts. Pidge was fortunate that she never got bad cramps but that didn't mean her period was comfortable, and the spongy stuff Lance had gotten from the Arusians wasn't exactly smooth down there either. But the guys were being really good with all this even though Pidge hated that it was a big deal at all. She hated how much it meant because she didn't like being the kind of girl who needed special treatment for being a girl.

It reminded her of her family, which was maybe the hardest part. Not just her mom, but her dad would try to cheer her up with bad jokes and Matt would take time out of whatever he was doing to watch tv with her. She missed them all so much.

A knock on the door, followed by, "Pidge?" broke into her thoughts. It was Allura. Pidge considered not answering, but Allura had only been trying to help earlier.

"Hey," Pidge said. Allura stood with her hands clasped in front of her like she wasn't sure of her welcome. "Come in."

"Pidge, I'm so very sorry about earlier," Allura said. "From what Lance said, what you're going through sounds horrible."

That actually made Pidge smile. "It's not that bad," she said. "I mean, it's not pleasant, but it's not terrible."

"You're not in pain?"

"Discomfort mostly." This was edging into awkward territory, but Allura was so earnest in her concern. "For some people it can be bad, but for me it's only really the second and third days. And I don't like the mood swings. Or being cold."

Allura's eyes got wider as Pidge went on so she stopped before she had Allura calling a medical alert on her again. "There's no cure?"

"Well, I guess I could have my uterus removed, but I don't want to do that."

That didn't seem to make things any clearer, and Pidge was guessing the boys hadn't been heavy on the details. "All right, it's like this," she said, sitting down on her bed and inviting Allura to join her. She gave a quick sketch of the human female reproductive process, then ranted about evolution being the worst. Allura asked a few questions and by the end had relaxed as she nodded along. 

"We have nothing so traumatic or frequent," she said, "but Altean females go through the Kweeoshes when we reach sexual maturity. It starts later than for humans at fifteen or sixteen, but it's only once. It lasts about fifteen quintants, and starts out with your skin drying out while your new adult skin grows underneath. It's very uncomfortable, and everything itches. Most females spend the time in public Kweeoshe pools or baths if they can at home. It takes ages for your baby skin to come off, and in gross pieces too."

Pidge felt her own eyes getting wider at Allura's description. "You molt," she said, not sure whether to be fascinated or horrified - probably very similar to how Allura felt hearing about Pidge's monthly bleeding.

"Is that what you'd call it? I'm so glad I don't have to go through that again."

"I'm glad I don't have to go through that at all!" Pidge said with feeling, laughing along when Allura laughed. The weight of the day shook loose as she did, leaving Pidge feeling like it was easier to breathe. She didn't feel as alone either, and for the first time since they'd arrived at the Castle of Lions she felt like she could be friends with Allura as a girl too and not just as a teammate.

When their laughter subsided to a comfortable sharing of space, Pidge ventured, "So Hunk made me cookies, and I saw Keith carrying blankets to the lounge for a movie the boys set up." She hadn't wanted to go before, but now it didn't sound so bad.

Allura smiled and shyly patted Pidge's hand. "That sounds lovely."

* * *

Lovely wasn't a word Pidge used much, but snuggled between Shiro and Allura on the lounge couch under a pile of blankets, with Hunk passing out goo-flavored cookies and Keith asking if she was warm enough, and Coran and Lance arguing over whose rules counted for fine cinema while they watched a hilariously Altean movie, it was pretty great.


End file.
